About Alejandro Casona, in English
By Lia Beeson

Vida y semblanza
Obra completa
Documentos de interés
Momentos culminantes
Tienda online
Noticias


www.alejandro-casona.com

After being translated into nine languages, Casona belongs as much to the World Theatre as to the Spanish Theatre.

With his prize-winning vernacular, insightful character portrayal and creative story lines, Casona won the public in twenty-four countries, and his plays are still applauded around the world, mainly by European and Hispanic audiences.

To celebrate his centennial, his plays were translated into English in 2003. Not only were they translated from language to language but from culture to culture and from century to century as well. This translation was made mainly for the stage, since “plays are not primarily literature to be read but to be set up onstage, lighted, acted, directed, before an audience” as Casona put it.


The playwright
The comedies
The dramas
History and fable plays
About Alejandro Casona's life (23 March 1903 – 17 September 1965)
Other works


The playwright

Personal experience led Casona to believe that theatre could cause people to think of a better world and improve their lives. “I simply don’t see reality as just anguish, despair, negativity and sex” he said. In his plays he contrasts how someone lives and how the other half lives, so that each one may understand the other better—something he was exposed to since childhood.

Atypically, coexisting with the Catholics in Casona’s native village was a Protestant Congregation of English and German origins. By his teen years he had lived in five Spanish provinces and later his job took him to hundreds of towns. During his first two years of expatriation he lived in various Latin American countries and at thirty-six settled in Argentina, traveling then through both continents mainly to direct his plays.

Casona’s ease with diversity contributed to the prompt and enthusiastic acceptance of his plays worldwide. His first hit was shown in Paris and Rome within two months of its Madrid world premiere, and equally promptly was his next hit shown in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A couple of his plays were performed over a thousand times in Spain and one ran for five years in Buenos Aires, then with a population of three million (1949). Repeatedly, his plays were staged in three or more countries within a calendar year.

Casona wrote mostly about perennial human concerns, rarely about a specific controversial local issue of the hour, which leaves readers with timeless works. Even hot issues of the day he occasionally wrote about, are also longstanding concerns of Western Culture—for instance, the influence on adult behavior of subconscious childhood trauma and a life-threatening act of war.

On the eve of the Spanish Civil War, though, he exposed current inequities and local contentions in his play Our Natasha. It cost him a ban on his works and a 26-year exile. Casona had sided with Spain’s Republic and was directing its Touring People’s Theatre education program. The play, acclaimed by critics and public, was made a symbol of the “left” by the opposing faction. It was playing in the city of Gijón the day the state of war was declared over the radio, 18 July 1936. Public and actors learned the news at intermission. There were violent demonstrators outside. The show did not resume. Casona and his family became fugitives. Their separate ordeals ended in France with the help of friends and the International Red Cross. They left France in 1937 with a theatre group that contracted him as its artistic director.

In a dozen of the translated plays, Casona has a series of feminist leads and characters. In sixteen of the plays he specified certain background and onstage music; sometimes he picked a traditional European tune and other times, a Spanish folkloric one, to preserve for posterity music that was very dear to him, an endeavor that musicologist Kurt Schindler calls “musical archeology.” In the 2003 commemorative English version, Casona’s chosen musical excerpts appear at the end of the play on simple treble staff with the folkloric lyrics translated.



The comedies


THE THIRD WORD

When a young woman arrives to teach a ‘boy’ to read and write, she learns her student is a savage young man raised in the woods by a half-crazed father. The teacher is curious by his attachment to nature and habit of swimming in the nude, while the young man doesn’t understand worldly thinking or why people wear swimsuits to get wet in the river. Together they uncover a plot to steal away the young man’s fortune, and in the process, discover one of three most important words.

Featured music: Humming of Johann Strauss’s “Vienna Woods.”


NO SUICIDE IN SPRINGTIME

At the assisted suicide clinic, an unusual doctor claiming ‘tears are as healthy as sweat’ treats unrequited love, sibling rivalry, loneliness, boredom and other diseases of the soul. Using reverse psychology, the doctor supports the efforts of suicidal patients and offers choices on how to die. In the process, and through a series of fortunate encounters, the hopeless and disappointed discover new ways to live.

This is the first play premiered in The Americas. It was begun en route on the Trans-Atlantic trip and it was staged shortly after the Casonas landed in Mexico.

Featured music: Humming of Johann Strauss’s Blue Danube.


ROMANCE IN THREE NIGHTS

A group of bachelor woodsmen prepare for seasonal work when a woman lost in the forested mountain shows up at their secluded cabin. Believing she is the woman who fits in the blue dress he’s hidden away for his dream wife, one logger claims the stranger as his beloved. Disillusioned when he discovers she is a drug smuggler for a vice ring, the woodsman plunges into vice, and later learns what true acceptance and forgiveness are.

Featured music: Folkloric nursery rhyme “I Am The Young Widow,” attributed to Schubert but widespread in both Spain and Latin America even to date.


TREES DIE STANDING TALL

A group of selfless members of a secret organization use their talents to minister to the emotional needs of mankind. Two members help an elderly man convince his wife that their long-lost grandson has changed his criminal ways. To heal the old woman’s heart, one member poses as the grandson and the other as his make-believe wife.

This is the play most performed outside Spain during Casona’s lifetime, and the most translated.

Featured music: A couple of lines of the opera arias “Figaro Cui” and “E Lucevan”.


LORD ARTHUR’S CRIME

Lord Arthur Savile postpones his wedding at the last moment after a palm-reading fortune teller declares his fate is to commit a crime. Believing the crime must happen before he weds, the overly in love, engaged lord devises several plots to fulfill his destiny, each appearing to have succeeded. Later, the fortune teller is revealed as an extortionist whose fundraising scam is foiled. (Based on a short story by Oscar Wilde.)


THREE DIAMONDS AND A WOMAN

When a beautiful heiress finds a wounded ‘Crown Prince of Thieves’ hiding in her father’s attic, she befriends the stranger and becomes embroiled in his life. Though she believes her love will bring him reform, repentance and a better life, she settles for something quite different.



The dramas


OUR NATASHA

On the eve of the Spanish Civil War, a reform school graduate earns her doctorate and becomes the principal of her girlhood alma mater. Unwilling to exchange compassion for discipline as the School Board was demanding, the doctor moves with her students to a secluded farmstead where she teaches them her own method of reform. Along the way, the doctor must choose between heartfelt obligations and her love for the self-proclaimed professor of optimism.

This is the most autobiographical play by Casona. Some characters even have the real names of Casona’s fellow students. Premiered on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, it was a smash hit that unwittingly aggravated the passions of the warring sides.

Featured music: Traditional Latin Hymn “Gaudeamus,” and the anonymous “Mario’s Song” and “Mumma’s Song” from Casona’s times.


THREE PERFECT WIVES

The once-calm lives of three husbands with so-called virtuous wives are shaken up when they read “A bachelor’s confession for men only” left by their best friend as his last will. The six inseparable friends learn more about each other in a few days than in the eighteen years since their shared wedding… especially when the bachelor returns alive and well. (Inspired by Arthur Schnitzler’s Der Tod des Junggesellen—Death of A Bachelor).

Featured music: Humming of Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin Wedding March.


SEVEN SCREAMS ACROSS THE SEA

Aboard a seagoing luxury liner, seven upper class citizens are put to the test when told they are being offered as sacrifices in a newly declared war. Lies, truths, secrets and suicidal fantasies are shared as everyone confesses their transgressions to one another, believing it is their last hours on earth.

Featured music: A Galician “Alala” from the old Spanish folklore, and the traditional Italian tarantella “Addio, Napoli.”


THE KEY IN THE ATTIC

A woman calls on the family doctor to help solve a mystery surrounding her brother-in-law’s failing health and frazzled emotions. Together they begin unraveling the man’s dreams, wondering if they represent hauntings of the past or premonitions of the future. Meanwhile, the tormented man’s wife and best friend unwittingly do their part in making sure history repeats itself.

Featured music: From the old Spanish folklore, the fifteenth-century song “Three Moor Girls.”


THE SEVEN BALCONY HOUSE

A mute eighteen-year-old boy and his off-center aunt share secrets and wordless conversations. The boy’s father, widower master of the house who has squandered the family’s fortune and is bent on finding family treasures hidden by the aunt, gets entangled with a manipulative maid determined to rid herself of any household competition.

Featured music: From the old Spanish folklore, the medieval romance “Count Flores.”


THE STRANDED SIREN

A wealthy man finds solace in a fantasy world with a blindfolded artist, an incompetent ghost and a drunken clown. While being counseled by the family doctor, the man becomes intrigued by the arrival of a pseudo siren. When love replaces infatuation, the man chooses to live in reality to save the woman from lifelong insanity or a self-prophetic deadly fate.

The play won Spain’s top literary award in 1933.

Featured music: Two lines of the opera aria “La Donna E Mobile” and France’s national anthem “La Marseillaise,” plus the thirteenth-Century Alfonso X’s “Cantiga Ten” music with Casona’s own lyrics.


LETTER FROM A STRANGER

In this single-scene monologue, a woman in mourning for her dead son writes her last words to the boy’s father who never knew of him. The agonizing writer mixes words and thoughts, pouring her soul out to the man she loved in place of her husband. The letter describes the two times the woman and man lay together, and her torment in knowing that for him, each was a one-night stand with a stranger. (Based on a short story by Stefan Zweig.)



The history and fable plays


THE ARCOS MILLERS

Three wives discover that their prominent husbands are visiting the miller’s attractive young wife behind their backs. The Arcos King Deputy is so smitten by the enticing beauty, he carefully plots seduction, not realizing that the miller and his wife are working together on a strategy of their own. As everyone schemes to get what they want and to get even, the tables are turned. (Based on Alarcon’s The Thr ee-Cornered Hat recount of a true story of the Goya era.)

Featured music: From the old Spanish folklore, the nineteenth-century “Corregidor And Molinera” ballad, Blas de Laserna’s “Tripili” Tirana, and a Seguidilla.


THE BOAT WITH NO FISHERMAN

A stock market trader makes a deal with the devil and commits murder of the heart in exchange for power and money. While the devil pushes him toward total damnation, the guilt-ridden trader visits the family of the man targeted by his evil intentions. Surrounded by the simplicity of a fisherman’s life, the trader finds redemption, love and true wealth.

Featured music: Casona did not specify any music. In this edition, a suitable song from the old Scandinavian folklore was chosen for Peter Andersen’s theme.


CROWN OF LOVE AND DEATH

Though complete strangers, the fourteenth-century Prince of Portugal Pedro and a Spanish princess are promised in marriage to ensure peace between their countries. Torn by a sense of duty and a father’s devotion, the king is forced to make life and death choices when the prince and the unroyal woman he wed in secret refuse to deny their love.

Featured music: From the old Spanish folklore, a thirteenth-Century “Cancion De Amigo,” and the “Romance of the Palmer.”

About the “Cancion de Amigo”: The only secular lays of the times to survive with music are seven Love Songs (Canciones De Amigo) by the troubadour Martin Codax, who revolutionized the genre with songs from a woman to her lover rather than from a man to his beloved as was then the norm. Codax’s Song Number Five was adapted from its medieval staff to modern treble staff. The lyrics are Casona’s own.

About the “Romance of the Palmer”: The Romance of the king who lost his beloved wife and wanders his sorrow (Romance Del Palmero) has been applied to various Iberian monarchs through the centuries, the last one being Alfonso XII, great-grandfather of the present King of Spain.


THE LADY OF THE DAWN

A family lost to sorrow is brought back to life after a young woman wishing to die finds acceptance and love among them. Though Death appears to take from the family a second time, she is waylaid from her mission by three playful children and misses the appointment. Death keeps her promise to the grandfather when she returns once more, but gets creative in who and how she takes what’s hers.

Casona dedicated this play to his native land of Asturias, “to its countryside, its people, its spirit. The scene is my native village, the characters are the shepherds and peasants I grew up with, the songs are the first ones I ever sang, and the words, half poetic and half ‘as the saying goes’ are from the old Astur Castillian, good-old grandparents echo.”

Featured music: From the old Spanish folklore, the medieval romance “Count Olinos” and the songs “The Clover” and “Master Saint John.”


THE KNIGHT WITH GOLD SPURS

The notorious, politically incorrect seventeenth-century bard has a chance to rekindle a twenty-year-old love affair. Opportunity passes the knighted poet by when he chooses to be imprisoned in an icy cold cell rather than accept a compromising government position. Holding true to a Spaniard’s “Dark Honor,” the aging Francisco De Quevedo is released in time to name his heir and put on his gold spurs for a proper entrance into the otherworldly kingdom.

This is the play most performed in Spain in the mid-1960s.

Featured music: From the old Spanish folklore, the medieval romances “Fonte-Frida,” “The Gray Wolf,” “Gerineldo” and “Don Bueso.”

About “Fonte Frida”: This romance was already popular in the court of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who financed Christopher Columbus’s voyage in 1492.


AGAIN THE DEVIL

Once upon a time, a fabled bandit captain was ousted by a student who reluctantly dealt with the devil to acquire the thief’s title in order to capture the heart of a princess. After it was announced that the devil was loose in the imaginary kingdom, the former student and the devil teamed up to trick the king into handing over his daughter in marriage to the brave, sword-wielding, devil-killing new captain.

Casona intended this play for young audiences—of all ages.

Featured music: Traditional Latin Hymn “Gaudeamus.”


UNFINISHED SYMPHONY

Composer Franz Schubert, an artist and two poets live poor but idealistic lives while sharing an unpaid rented room in Vienna. After pawning what isn’t theirs, Schubert’s roommates don him in clothes suitable for his first public concert. While celebrating his success, the composer falls for a Hungarian Countess and later agrees to be her piano teacher. With fate in the way, both their love and his musical tribute are cut short.

Featured music: Nursery rhyme “I Am The Young Widow,” attributed to Schubert.



About Alejandro Casona's life (23 March 1903 – 17 September 1965)

(NOTE: What follows is a mosaic of statements by Casona, arranged chronologically. Most of them were originally written or said in first person in his newspaper articles, radio talks and interviews. A few were changed to first person from some later reference by interviewers and correspondents.)

I was born in a very small Asturian village, Besullo, way off-track in the mountains. We got there by horse, a two-hour ride from the county seat. My father and mother were teachers. I was raised in an old manor house that served as school also, and being the largest house in the village, it was called by all la casona. As usually happens in villages—where most people are related and family names repeat—families were better known by their place of residence, so we were los de la casona. When I began getting published, I chose Casona as my pen name.

Besullo to me was paradise. Village children from poor families didn’t have toys but I had a sensational toy—a chestnut tree. I remember it colossal, without branches, the trunk totally hollowed by lightning. Seven or eight children fit in it. It was our all-purpose playground, now our castle, then our ship, or our palace, or our forest—a marvel toy.

My Besullo people kept alive orally the ancestral folklore, but now they are losing the habit. After their work on the fields, they gathered to recite verses and sing ancient melodies that now I know are popular ballads from the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries with stories about wolves, shepherds, princes, spells. My mother sang in a very sweet small voice while doing her chores. I’d listen to her all quiet so I wouldn’t distract her from it. My father taught me to read; my mother to sing.

In Spain, public school teachers were the lowest-paid government employees, so we had a very modest life. The worst was that my parents couldn’t always find a decent teaching job in the same town, so they were forced to live separately, always trying to be as close to each other as possible. We children had to take turns going with Dad or Mom, as if they were divorced.

We moved to Villaviciosa when I was five, and there I lived until I was ten. During those crucial years, from five to nine, a person’s life is cast forever. I think it’s the fault of all those roads to Tazones and Miravalles where my father told me marvelous stories answering never-ending questions during our ambitiously long hikes, that I still need to walk about endlessly when creating a play.

I began high school in Gijón, and saw theater for the first time. It excited me tremendously, to the extent that I couldn’t sleep that night. Not that I thought I would ever belong to that wonderful new world, just that it was so much better than anything I had ever experienced before. Then we moved to Palencia and to Murcia, where I finished high school. There, around 1917, a Conservatory of Music and Drama opened. A friend of mine told me, "Why don't you come to the Conservatory? Study Theatre, you’d like it." I knew my parents wouldn’t consent, so I took Drama classes unbeknownst to them.

The passion for acting grew so strong that one night I ran away from home with my friend, who is an actor in Madrid today, to pursue a career as comedians in San Pedro del Pinatar where there was a theater company. An awful company! They needed a couple of boys for some roles and took us on. Then they just left us there, forlorn and hungry, terribly hungry. We had to walk back home. When after those three days of hunger I got home, humbled, my father didn’t scold me because he too had run away from home at my age. The passion for acting stayed in me forever, though I know I am a very poor actor.

I graduated from Madrid’s Advanced School of Education, where I met and fell in love with Rosalia, wanting to marry her without delay. Higher salaries were given then to teachers on locations where life was harder, like the Aran Valley, Spanish birthplace of the Garonne River. But it was almost an exile, because during the crude winter the Pyrenees were cut off from the rest of Spain; our only way out was the Garonne River Basin toward France. I remember jumping out of the house on skis from the window, but at twenty-four… what else could I want?

I lived three happy years in the Valley. That life of inescapable quietude led me to much reading. The house was comfortable and it provided me something very important to study—privacy. My passion for the theatre resurfaced. One good day when I woke up I said to myself, “Well, so, let’s write.” And I went fully into play writing.

In 1931 the Teacher’s Teacher Manuel B. Cossío started the Republic’s Ministry of Public Instruction Program called Educational Missions and I fell in to do the People’s Theatre. I had the good fortune to be appointed its Director. The Touring People’s Theatre—and choir—was a group of fifty young men and women students from varied universities, unpaid volunteers who even brought their food. Cervantes and Molière were among the favorites on our four by six meter stage set up in half an hour by the actors themselves with all the rough wood and properties we could fit in a pick-up truck. By the onset of the civil war we had given 328 performances to illiterate country folks watching theatre for the first time in towns of less than 1000 people. And we had to show them how to improve their crops; equip their schools with useful materials; set up school cafeterias and clothes distribution centers; work with our intellects and our hands for common ideals and interests. My social work was more important than my theatre work; I am happier for the former than for the latter. If ever I did something beautiful to be proud of, it is indeed that. If ever I learned something vital about people and theater, it is then and there that I learned it.

I never took part in politics, but when the war broke out in 1936, I was branded one of the “red foes.” Among all my generation colleagues, though, I am the one who went to jail for the shortest time—24 hours. Through the mountains I took my wife and daughter to a secluded Asturian village, then far from the fighting. Following the north coast I crossed to France in September, just hours before the border at the Bidasoa River was closed. Through France I went down to Barcelona, Valencia and Madrid, where by November 500 bombs were falling daily.

I remember times of heroic determination when a burst of idealism would sweep away the dross of war. There’s one I want to recall now. The day was November 23, 1936. I was called by the Ministry of Public Instruction to go from Madrid to Valencia with a group of university professors among whom stood out Doctor Márquez, pride of Spain’s ophthalmology. He was leaving behind his meticulous files with thirty years of daily work. It was a long, silent car ride with headlights off in the night crisscrossed by low-flying planes. Two weeks later Dr. Márquez entered Casa De La Cultura where we lodged, joyfully waving a letter. Its first lines informed him that his home had been destroyed in an air raid, but more important to him was that militiamen had managed to salvage his files from the rubble and returned them to him. Shortly after, through the same nocturnal lights-off route, our trucks were saving from destruction the Prado Museum masterpieces via Valencia, Barcelona and ultimately Geneva, Switzerland, in care of the League of Nations.

My family and I left Cherbourg for Latin America on the Iberia—a boat that was later sunk during World War II—with the Diaz-Collado Theatre Company. We had a long touring season, almost two years, through various countries. Then, on my own, I moved to Argentina under contract. It was the start of World War II. I settled in Buenos Aires.

At that time, 1939 and up to 1945 or so, Latin America looked up to what was called the “Madrid Meridian.” The last Madrid premiere was the talk of Buenos Aires so, when I arrived, people already knew me. My plays were being performed. It was as having lived there all the time, as having always premiered there. My plays started becoming international successes, which caught me by surprise. I must admit I was lucky. Lately, though, after so many years, the nostalgia for Spain doesn’t let me live. I want to go back there. I want to die there.

And there he went in 1962, and there he died. In July 1965, Casona underwent an operation to correct a mitral valve constriction he had suffered through the years. The hoped-for problem-free convalescence actually became a two-month sedated agony ending in death September 17th.

Casona’s only child and collaborator Marta Isabel died in 1967.

Casona’s wife Rosalia died in 1968.

Casona’s legacy to us lives on.



Other works

COLLECTED WORKS. First Edition, Mexico City, 1954. Six other editions, Madrid, 1961-1977.

Poetry

El Peregrino De La Barba Florida (The Blooming-bearded Pilgrim), tale of wonders on a legendary pilgrimage to Santiago De Compostela, in twenty eight short poems (1926). Signed as Alejandro Rodriguez.

La Flauta Del Sapo (The Toad’s Panpipes), a collection of fifteen short lyrical poems (1928-1930). First work he signed as Alejandro Casona.



Prose

Flor De Leyenda (The Flower of Legends), a collection of fourteen legends including Arabian Nights, Lohengrin, Hector and Achilles, The Nibelungs, Chanson de Roland, The Cid, Tristan and Isolde, William Tell; recipient of Spain’s 1932 National Prize in Literature.

Essays on the Devil (1925-26), Lope De Vega (1935), Francisco Pizarro (1966).



Theatre

El Lindo Don Gato (Bonny Puss, Esquire) in one act, for children’s theater (1931-1936).

¡A Belén, Pastores! (To Bethlehem, Shepherds!) Christmas play in five scenes, for children’s theater (1931-1936).

Retablo Jovial (Jovial Tableau) a collection of five skits started for The People’s Theater, based on material by Cervantes, Count Lucanor, Bocaccio, and oral tradition (1931-1949).

Adaptation of four Spanish classics: El Anzuelo De Fenisa (Fenisa’s Lure, 1958) and Peribáñez (Peribañez, 1962) by Lope de Vega; El Burlador De Sevilla (Seville’s Seducer—Don Juan, 1961) by Tirso de Molina, and La Celestina (Celestina, 1965) by Fernando De Rojas.

Translation—with daughter Marta—of Shakespeare’s Richard III and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1962).



uncollected printed works

Libretto for Alberto Ginastera’s opera Don Rodrigo (1964).



Prose

La Empresa Del Ave Maria (The Ave Maria Project) awarded in 1920.

Translation of Thomas De Quincey’s Los Placeres Y Los Tormentos Del Opio (Pleasures and Torments of Opium), Editorial Mundo Latino, 1926.

Translation with a long prologue of Voltaire’s L’Ingenu and Candide, Editorial Mundo Latino, 1927.

Lectures throughout the Americas and Europe, including Sugerencias Acerca Del Amor: Amor Historia, Amor Geografía, Amor Psicología y Etica (Thoughts About Love: Love History, Love Geography, Love Psychology and Ethics. 1938)

Translation of Ferenc Kormendi’s La Aventura de Budapest (Adventure in Budapest), Editorial Sudamericana, Buenos Aires, 1942.

Translation from the French of Finland’s National Epic The Kalevala, Editorial Losada, Buenos Aires, 1944.

Essays for magazines and over a hundred newspaper articles (1937-1964). Forty-four of the latter (1943-1961) were collected in a volume in 1983.



Theatre

El Otro Crimen (The Other Crime), one-act play written in collaboration with a fellow student (c. 1927).

Translation from the French of four one-act plays by Auguste Strindberg, commissioned by the Compañía Ibero-Americana de Publicaciones (1929).

El Misterio Del “Maria Celeste” (The “Mary Celeste” Mystery), based on Alfonso Hernández Catá’s story (1935).

Maria Curie, Biografía Escénica (Marie Curie, Dramatized Biography) in collaboration with Francisco Madrid (1940).

Pinocho y La Princesita Blancaflor (Pinochio And Young Princess Blanca Flor) a play for children (1940).

Translation of Les Ratés, Folle Du Ciel, L’Innocente (The Failures, Heavenly Madwoman, The Innocent Girl) by H. R. Lenormand, Editorial Losada, Buenos Aires (1943)

Translation of Sombras Queridas (Dear Shadows) by Jacques Deval (1952).

Stage adaptation of Cartas De Amor De Una Monja Portuguesa (Love Letters of A Portuguese Nun), one-act play (1963).

El Amor De Los Cuatro Coroneles (The Love of Four Colonels), translation in collaboration with daughter Marta of Peter Ustinov’s play (1958).



works for the cinema, radio and tv

Over a hundred of his radio talks were collected in print in 1982.



Movies (Argentine, Mexican, Spanish, French)

Original scripts

Veinte Años y Una Noche (Twenty Years and One Night – 1940)

En El Viejo Buenos Aires (In Old Buenos Aires, in collaboration with others – 1941)

Concierto De Almas (Concerto of Souls, in collaboration – 1942)

Ceniza Al Viento (Ashes To The Wind—one of the six episodes – 1942)

Su Primer Baile (Her First Ball, in collaboration – 1942)

Cuando Florezca El Naranjo (When the Orange Tree Blossoms – 1943)

La Prodiga (The Prodigal Gal – 1945, starring Eva Duarte, “Evita,” who married Juan Peron that year, becoming Argentina’s First Lady the following year. The movie was never released.)

Milagro De Amor (Love’s Miracle – 1946)

Si Muero Antes De Despertar (If I Die In My Sleep – 1951)

No Abras Nunca Esa Puerta (Never Open That Door – 1952)

Un Angel Sin Pudor (A Naughty Angel – 1953)

Tormenta de Odios (Hatred Storms – 1954)



Screen adaptation of novels and plays

Edmondo De Amicis’s La Maestrina Degli Operai (The Workers’ Girl Teacher – 1941)

Henrik Ibsen’s Casa de Muñecas (Doll House – 1943)

Jean Jacques Bernard’s Le Fruit Mordu (“Martine” – 1945)

Benito Pérez Galdós’s El Abuelo (The Grandfather – 1946)

Alfonso X El Sabio’s Margarita La Tornera (Margaret The Doorkeeper – 1946)

Leonid Andreyev’s El Que Recibe Las Bofetadas (He Who Gets Slapped – 1947)

Agatha Christie’s El Extraño Caso De La Mujer Asesinada (The Strange Case Of The Murdered Woman – 1949)

Henrik Ibsen’s Juan Gabriel Borkman (1955)

Screen adaptation of his own plays

Nuestra Natacha (Our Natasha – Spain,1936 and Argentina,1944)

El “Maria Celeste” (The “Mary Celeste” – 1944)

La Dama Del Alba (The Lady of the Dawn – Mexico,1949 and 1965)

La Barca Sin Pescador (The Boat with No Fisherman – 1950 and 1964)

Romance De Dan Y Elsa (Romance in Three Nights – 1950)

Los Arboles Mueren De Pie (Trees Die Standing Tall - 1951)

Las Tres Perfectas Casadas (Three Perfect Wives – 1952 and 1972)

Siete Gritos En El Mar (Seven Screams Across the Sea – 1954)

La Tercera Palabra (The Third Word – 1955)



Radio

Over three hundred radio talks, mostly in the Americas. One hundred eleven (1960-1962) were collected in print in 1982.

Television

One-hour adaptation and direction of fifteen of Spanish Literature’s greatest dramatic works, going from classic Lope de Vega (1562-1635) to his own colleague and friend Federico Garcia Lorca (1899-1936). The plays aired on Argentine television every Thursday from June through August, 1959.